Work Text:
“Fuck dammit,” Tony said, “The Wi-Fi asshole is here again.”
Pepper looked at him from across the room, exasperation in her features. “Downloads slow again?”
“It started off as that,” Tony replied, spinning his laptop around to show her, “But now there’s this. A whole folder full of this. The jackass is laughing at me.” The screen showed a cartoon of a person running away with a computer, laughing. “But I’m done taking this lying down.”
“In the past month you’ve changed your password almost daily and called the cops twice,” Pepper corrected him gently, turning a page in her book
Tony glared at her. “I’m done taking this lying down, unsupportive best friend. I’m going straight to the source.”
“Except you have no idea who this person is.”
“Shut up,” Tony retorted. “I’ll figure out a way. I can trace his files back to his location, right?”
Pepper shrugged. “You’re the comp-sci major, not me.”
“What do you even study?” Tony asked.
“Business,” Pepper said dryly. “As I’ve told you twice a week for two years. You wrote a program to help me with my project last year. A business-related program.”
Tony smiled. “Oh yeah. That. Anyway, I’ll figure this guy out. You’ll see.”
In the meantime, he reset his password and changed his Wi-Fi name. He was running low on clever, low-character-count Harry Potter references, and the mysterious Wi-Fi thief had already hacked all the Game of Thrones ones, so it was time to turn to Lord of the Rings. The Wi-Fi network became Isengard; the password, theyretakingthehobbits.
Five minutes later, the rat bastard was back, and there was a sketch of the same cartoon man hauling hobbits across the screen.
Fuck dammit.
He became so immersed in hacking out the mysterious visitor’s location that he barely noticed Pepper kissing him on the forehead and going home to her own university-owned shitty apartment. He had a thief to catch, after all.
It took him longer than it should have and it turned out the asshole was living literally a floor above him.
“Who is it?” a male voice shouted from behind the door Tony had just finished banging on.
“The guy who’s Wi-Fi you’ve been stealing,” Tony replied.
He had just enough time to think shit that was stupid he’ll never open the door now before the man opened the door and JESUS CHRIST he was a well-built, attractive man. “Took you long enough to find me,” the guy said cheerfully enough. “I’m Steve Rogers.”
“Tony Stark.”
“That explains the first network name,” Steve replied. Originally, his network was House Stark and the password was winteriscoming. He was proud of it. It was clever and a pun and a pop culture reference. This dickhead made him change it.
Regrettably, the guy had like five inches on him so Tony couldn’t get in his face like he’d planned. “Douchebag, can you get your own damn Wi-Fi?”
Steve shrugged. “I don’t know, yours is pretty good and all I have to do to get it is understand a basic pop-culture reference, and I’m kind of a junkie when it comes to that stuff. I don’t see why I should.”
“Because it’s stealing?” Tony murmured as he thought of a real argument.
That one seemed to work, though. Steve’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said, abashed, “I just need the Wi-Fi to use the online version of Photoshop because I can’t afford it- I’m a graphic design major, I-“
“Aw, you actually feel guilty, Jesus Christ,” Tony said, “Now I feel bad because it’s not actually inconvenient-“
“No, I’m slowing your bandwidth, I’m sorry-“
“I’m rich as fuck, my bandwidth is fine-“
“It’s stealing, I’m wrong-“
“I can deal-“
“You shouldn’t have to-“
“Tell you what,” Tony finally said. “You can keep camping on my Wi-Fi if you agree to this one, little thing.”
The guy was unabashedly sincere. “Anything.”
“Let me take you out to coffee,” Tony said. The guy was hot, he got Tony’s pop culture references, and he had this genuine aw-shucks Boy Scout attitude that Tony had never found attractive before but was now weirdly endearing. Tony grabbed Steve’s hand and scrawled his number on it. “We can talk about the new Hobbit movie.”
“I, um,” Steve said, and suddenly Tony thought, shit. He’s straight. Tony hit on a straight guy and Jesus Christ Pep was right coming here was a bad, bad, bad idea, fuck it, I’m a dumbass- “Okay,” the guy finally said, crimson across his face. “Coffee.”
Tony grinned at Steve for a minute, and Steve grinned at him, and they stared at each other for a long moment before Tony retreated down the hall, arms wrapped around his chest.
Steve shut the door and carefully copied the number into his phone before cleaning the ink off his hands. Ink poisoning was not a real thing, but still. Steve liked having clean hands. It was reassuring.
When he reopened his laptop, he’d been kicked out of the Wi-Fi network by a change in password again. This time, it took him a second to locate Tony’s network. It was now called “KEEP OUT UNLESS STEVE”. It prompted him for a password.
He entered Tony’s number and opened the internet with a smile.
Tony glanced back in Steve’s haha-stealing-your-wifi-cartoons folder on a whim before going back to bed.
Sure enough, there was a cartoon of the two of them at a coffee house with little hearts in their eyes.
-bonus-
“Aw, man,” Natasha said as she looked down at the list of wireless networks. “Stark actually protected his Wi-Fi this time.”
“No shit?” Clint said, looking over her shoulder. “It’s always a stupidly easy pop-culture reference.”
Natasha looked at him with overdramatic agony. “Now how will we torrent porn?”
Clint shoved her and said, “It’s not porn, it’s anime, and you like it as much as I do.” He narrowed his eyes at the list of networks. “Wait, isn’t Steve the muscley blond dude a floor above Stark?”
“Oh,” Natasha said, “Oh, I know the password.” She dug out her phone and entered Stark’s number.
“You’re the best, Nat,” Clint said, settling down next to her to stream some Netflix.
“I know,” she replied, legs thrown across his lap.